Tatiana
In the wild, a Siberian of Tatiana’s age might have a range as extensive as sixty square miles, but she’d never been in the wild, had never known anyplace but this and the zoo in Denver, and her territory was measured in square feet, not miles. Industry standards vary on the minimum size of big cat exhibits, but restraining walls are mandated at sixteen and a half feet, a height no tiger, no matter the provocation or duress, could ever hope to surmount. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the incident at the San Francisco Zoo, the wall was found to be substandard, measuring just twelve and a half feet from the floor of the moat to its highest point.
Siobhan
She managed to make it back without her mother catching her — and what her mother didn’t know would never hurt her, would it? That’s what Jason said anyway, and, giggling, she agreed with him as he led her to the bar through the dense swaying forest of adults, who were dancing now, their arms in motion and heads bobbing to the beat. The DJ was playing Beyoncé, Fergie, Adele, Megan’s favorites. Megan was dancing with Dylan and the bridesmaids all had their boyfriends out on the dance floor now too. The bass was so strong it was like an earthquake and she could feel it thrumming through the soles of her shoes. People made way for them at the bar as if they were celebrities — and they were, or she was anyway, flower girl, sister of the bride — and she asked for a Diet Coke, no ice, and Jason got a club soda and cranberry with two cherries and a shot of grenadine, then they lined up at the food table for dim sum and ribs and still her mother never came looking for her.
Jason piled up his plate and then set it back down again on the table. “Oh, shit,” he said, “I better go wash my hands. Watch my plate?”
“Jason, it wasn’t blood.”
He gave her a look of disbelief. He was tall for his age and his head seemed to bob up over his neck like E.T.’s, and she wondered about that, if she could give him a secret moniker — just two initials — when she texted Tiffany and Margaret to tell them she was hanging out with a boy at the wedding. She liked the way his hair was clipped in two perfect arches around his ears. She liked the way he was grinning at her now. “I wouldn’t want to catch AIDS,” he said, holding out his palms as if to deny it.
And then he was gone and she started eating by herself at a table in the far corner of the pavilion, but when he came back, conspicuously wiping his hands on the legs of his suit pants, he picked up his plate and came right to her. They didn’t say anything for a long while, eating in silence and staring out at the adults as if they were going to have to take a quiz on the party. She heard her mother’s high whinnying laugh and the next minute her father was leading her mother out onto the dance floor and she watched them settle into some weird gyrating sort of dance they must have learned in college back in the seventies. “You know what?” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen my parents dance before.”
“My parents would never dance,” Jason said. She followed his eyes to where they sat stiffly in two chairs pushed up against the rail, Jason’s grandmother just to the right of them and just as stiff. “Even if somebody picked up an AK and said ‘Dance or die!’”
“What about you?” she asked and she felt her cheeks color. “I mean, do you dance?”
“Me?” He held the moment, straight-faced, before he broke into a grin. “I’m the number one best dancer in the world,” he said, letting his eyes flick over the dance floor before turning back to her. “Now that Michael Jackson’s dead.”
Vijay
What he did, and it was nothing anybody in any movie he’d ever seen would have done, was run. As soon as the tiger let go of him — to slam back into Manny so hard it was like a rocket flashing across the pavement — he scrambled to his feet and ran as fast as he could through the gloom of the day that was closing down around him, looking frantically for a way out, a tree to climb, anything, before he realized he was making for the snack bar, where there were people, where they could call 911, call the cops, call an ambulance. He didn’t think of Vik till Vik came pounding up behind him, blood all over, his clothes in strips and his eyes rolled back in his head. They didn’t say anything, not a word, just ran. It was maybe three hundred yards to the snack bar, three football fields, but it seemed to take forever to get there, as if they were running in place in some waking nightmare — and that was what this was, exactly what it was.
But when they got there, frantic, the doors were locked and they could see the guy inside, the metal head, the moron, and he wasn’t moving toward them—he was backing away! Vik was beating on the glass, they both were, shouting for help, shouting to open up because there was an animal loose, a tiger loose, open up, open up!
The kid didn’t open up. He just backed into a corner and tried to stare them down, but he had his cell in his hand and he was punching in a number (as it later turned out he was dialing 911, not because he believed them but because he thought they were on drugs and trying to rob the place). They kept beating on the glass and they would have broken right through it if they could, beating with the palms of their hands and shouting out for help, until they watched the kid’s face go slack and turned to see the tiger coming right at them, its feet churning and its head down — following the blood trail, following the spoor. Vijay felt it like a hot wind as it blew past him to careen into Vik, its paws raking and batting, and though he flattened himself against the glass, shouting “Vik! Vik!” there was nothing he could do but wait to die as the flashing teeth and furious claws worked his brother over.
Tatiana
This world. This world of apes, this screeching world. She was out in it, terrified, enraged, doing the only thing she knew to do, one down and dead and another beneath her, all the power of all the generations invested in her and burning bright. She roared. She showed her fangs. And she would have gone for the other one, the one frozen there by the shimmering wall, if it weren’t for the distraction of this solid rolling thing with its flashing lights and screaming siren and the hot quick shock of surprise that ended her life.
Siobhan
She danced till she was soaked through — and he was right, Jason, he was the best dancer in the world. The music seeped through her skin and into her blood. Her father danced with her, then she danced with her sister and everybody was taking pictures with their cell phones. And then there was a slow song and Jason put an arm around her waist and she watched what everybody else was doing, all the adults, and rested her head on his shoulder, on his chest, right where she could feel the flutter of his heart. She couldn’t hear any of the animals anymore, couldn’t have heard them even if they’d been roaring, because the music was everything. The night settled in. Jason rocked with her. And if she knew where she was at all, it was because of the smell, the furtive lingering odor of all those animals locked in their cages.